Lipogram
by honest-brain
Summary: In retrospect, Sirius should have planned his confession better. He knew not to confess during the middle of a prank, really, he did. Especially this prank. After all, how effective was a love declaration when he literally could not say the words "Remus, I love you"?
1. Chapter 1

**Lipogram**

lipogram /ˈlipəˌɡram,ˈlī-/  
noun  
a composition from which the writer systematically omits a certain letter or certain letters of the alphabet

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* * *

"Uh, how exactly would that cause chaos?" James asked, scratching his head in confusion, messing up his already untidy hair. The four boys were in the Gryffindor dormitory on a Tuesday night that they miraculously had free from detentions or any other club obligations. James was lounging upside down on his bed, placing his head next to Peter's shoulder as the blond boy sat on the floor with his potions textbook in his lap.

"Try it," Remus challenged lazily from his own bed. "Say a few sentences without the letter 'e'," he said, waving his wand lazily in the air, creating little wisps of color in the air to entertain himself and the boy next to him.

"Fine—"

"E!" Remus called out, and James let out a grunt of frustration at the interruption. Lying next to the prefect, Sirius let out a bark of laughter.

"Can't believe you failed on the first word, Prongs! Do blue next Moony," Sirius said, poking Remus in the side with his elbow. Remus merely shoved back before waving his wand again, changing from gold streaks to blue.

"Shut it, Black. I'd like to see you do better." James huffed and grabbed a pillow to throw it over at the two on Remus's bed. It landed off to the side of Remus's stomach.

"I count three words in that one," muttered Peter, flipping through the textbook. "Uh, what potions are gonna be on the pop quiz tomorrow, again?"

"It's called a pop quiz for a reason, Pete." James's hand came down to awkwardly pat his friend on the head. "Also, you're supposed to be on my side, here. Unlike those two WANKERS over there."

"Can't use the word wankers, Jamesy boy!" Sirius called out. Suddenly sitting up and accidentally kneeing Remus just beneath his armpit, Sirius flung his arms up. "I bet you I could do it."

Remus snorted with a mixture of pain and amusement. "Bet. You've already failed."

Sirius grabbed James's pillow and flung it at the werewolf's face. "I," he started slowly, "can say words normally without…"

Across the room James and Peter looked at each other and snorted. "You look constipated, mate," Peter said.

Sirius crossed his arms and hunched over in a thoughtful position. "I still hav—" He paused, brows furrowing in concentration. "Still did not say… what I did not…plan to say." He straightened up and smiled at his roommates, proud of his accomplishment.

"Ha!" James shouted, face red from all the blood rushing to his head. He pointed in Sirius's general direction. "You said…you…hm…"

"He didn't," Peter supplied.

"You didn't," Remus agreed, patting Sirius on his knee, causing the other boy to smile brighter. Remus tilted his head backwards to look at James, whose face by now was a deep dark shade between red and purple, followed by messy, floppy black hair hanging a couple of feet off the ground. "Enough chaos for you, Prongs?"

Sirius flopped onto Remus's chest, eliciting a grunt from the boy beneath him. Propping his head onto one arm, he reached his other hand to stroke Remus's brown hair. "Oh dearest Moons. Enough. You couldn't even last a word."

"I will hex you."

"Hex," Sirius repeated, moving his face closer to the other boy's and looking to his bright honey colored eyes. Remus retaliated by stabbing his wand into Sirius's side, causing him to yelp and roll off.

"Alright, alright. Point," James said as he cautiously made his way to sit up with Peter's help. "Okay boys, let's get to work!"

It took the four boys eight days to research and plan the implementation of the prank. The idea was to create a force strong enough to encompass the entire castle and all its inhabitants. Remus originally wanted the spell to extend to ghosts as well ("Imagine Peeves not being able to say his own name!"), but was quickly overruled by the amount of extra effort required to affect ghosts (and the sheer uncertainty when dealing with non-corporeal bodies, honestly). Remus figured out the spellwork to get it to predict and recognize people's speech. Sirius extended that to make sure the spell was specifically looking for words with the letter 'e' in them and not merely words with both the long and short 'e' sounds. Peter then added his layer of charms to make sure that anyone uttering illegal words had their lips zipped together for five seconds before unzipping ("We should use real zippers for this!" "No, Sirius."). James was the one to complete the area and time components of the spell, ensuring that it would go off when and where they wanted and would only last a week. The boys went to bed Wednesday night the following week, exhausted and ready for the spell to activate at 6 o'clock in the morning.

Sirius crawled into Remus's bed and made his way underneath the covers, waiting for the prefect to come back from the bathroom. Remus came out in pajama bottoms that were too short since he hit his growth spurt the previous summer. They ended just above his ankles, and when Sirius had first seen them on the first night back, he had called Remus scandalous. Remus in return had vanished all of Sirius's underwear and replaced them with loincloths.

"Move," Remus said, trying to shove Sirius aside.

"Can't say that tomorrow," Sirius gloated in sleepy smug voice. "Also cold." He stretched out his arms, waiting for the other boy to scoot in and warm him up.

Remus looked critically at his friend for a few seconds before sighing and moved into Sirius's waiting arms. "When did you start?" he asked.

"Hm?"

He could feel Sirius's cold nose press into his shoulder. "The spell isn't set to go off until tomorrow, but you haven't spoken a word with an 'e' in a while. When did you start?" His arms came up and wrapped around Sirius, rubbing up and down his back.

"Shhhh. No talk. Warm only." Sirius moved to place his feet on Remus's bare ankles and chuckled when he felt his friend jump and grunt. He didn't understand how Remus was always warm, but as long as he wasn't pushed away from his favorite heat source, he didn't particularly care. Remus let out a huff of exaggerated annoyance, and Sirius shivered as he felt the other boy's breath against his neck. He settled in more comfortably against the werewolf, absorbing all the body heat he could get. Soon, both boys drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, Sirius awoke bright and early to a muted chaos. No one was shouting or screaming as far as he could hear, but he could feel the humming of discontent and slight distress in the castle, and it delighted him. He got up from Remus's bed, untangling his limbs from Remus's own, and got dressed in a hurry, excited to see how his fellow schoolmates would react to their new speech limitation. He wondered how long it would take Hogwarts' occupants to realize exactly why their lips were sealing shut in intervals of five seconds.

He jumped back on Remus's bed, fully clothed. "Moony! Moony, Moony, Moony!" He started shaking the prefect, earning himself a groan from the other boy. "Up! Chaos awaits!" He could also vaguely hear Peter groaning in the background and mumbling something incoherent. James's bed was empty, and Sirius assumed he had yet another early morning quidditch practice.

"It's too e-mfph!" Remus's lips pursed together against his own will and remained closed for five seconds as Sirius laughed gleefully. Remus's still half asleep eyes widened as he looked at Sirius in confusion before realization dawned on his face. He narrowed his eyes at Sirius's early morning glee.

"It works!" He shouted. Sirius twisted his body around to look at Peter. "Wormtail! You too! Up, up!" He grabbed one of Remus's pillows, ignoring Remus's grumbled protests and sleepy attempts to hold onto it, and threw it at Peter's head, hitting him right on.

"Go away!" could be heard from underneath the pillow. Peter hadn't bothered to even move it as he rolled onto his side, back facing Sirius. "Go back to sl-mmm!"

Sirius shook his head in disappointment. "You both know what you can't say. Got to think from now on, troops!"

Remus snorted into his remaining pillow. "Troops?" He shifted his face to look at Sirius and raised an eyebrow.

Sirius shrugged. "Pack, unit, squad," he listed. "Can't say words with you know what, you know."

"Today will b-mmm!" Remus exhaled through his nose as he waited for his lips to unseal, ignoring Sirius's delighted smirk. "Will stay painful, won't it?"

Sirius gave Remus a predatory look and bent down to touch Remus's nose with his own. He stared directly into Remus's eyes, a warm honey color with disgusting crusty flakes at the edges of his eyelids. Sirius was in favor of ignoring that. He supposed even he wasn't a specimen of physical perfection all of the time. "This was all your plan," he whispered, bumping Remus's nose with his as he said each word. He took pleasure in watching Remus cross his eyes, trying to stare at their noses as he spoke.

Remus pushed Sirius away in annoyance but not hard enough for him to fall off the bed. He buried his face completely into his remaining pillow and sighed. Then he let out a groan as he felt Sirius's weight on his back. The bastard was right. This stupid prank was all his brilliant idea. And he had a whole week of it to look forward to.

"Don't worry, Moons! It's a fun plan!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Lipogram**

lipogram /ˈlipəˌɡram,ˈlī-/  
noun  
a composition from which the writer systematically omits a certain letter or certain letters of the alphabet

.

.

.

* * *

Upon entering the Great Hall for breakfast, Sirius was quickly tugged onto the seat right next to an upset looking James Potter. "Quidditch," James hissed. "Prank ruin quidditch play match this morning."

Sirius barked out a laugh, causing several glares to come his way. He shrugged them off, used to all the silent accusations whenever something unpleasant was affecting the whole population of Hogwarts. "That's bad grammar, Prongsy." He threw an arm around James and used his other one to start piling food onto his plate. He could feel James staring intently at him.

"How?" the bespectacled boy asked him. Three seats down he could hear someone whine in frustration as their lips became sealed.

"How what?" Sirius said, taking a bite of his eggs. He could see James's messy eyebrows come together and dip as the boy thought of what to say. He reached for a glass of pumpkin juice.

"How is your…talk so normal?"

Sirius snorted, careful to avoid spilling juice everywhere. "My talk?"

James glared at him, which only made Sirius's smile widen. "Prongs, this is a brilliant plan. Can't allow it to drag you down!" He gave James's cheek a fond pat with his free hand before returning to his breakfast. His arm that was still around the other boy's shoulders was rudely shoved off, and Sirius retaliated by stealing the bacon already on James's plate.

"G—mmph!" James's lips pressed together involuntarily, and he exhaled deeply through his nose and put his face in his hands. Sirius gave James a pat on the back.

"Morning," a grumpy voice said to Sirius's right, and he turned to smile cheerfully at Remus with a mouth full of food.

"That's..disgusting," Remus said slowly. "Don't…do that with your mouth not shut." A few tables over Sirius could hear the sound of silverware clanking about in frustration as students were unable to speak normally.

Sirius swallowed and beamed. "Moony's figuring out how to play! Catch up, Prongs!"

"Howwww," James whined, glaring at Sirius, "do you not…stop in your…talk?" Beside him, Sirius could hear Remus snort. Before Sirius could reply, an annoyed Lily Evans came over to their table, glaring at James in particular.

"I don't know how, or why, but stop it," she said. The three boys blinked at her in response. Behind Lily, Sirius could see one of the bigger burlier Slytherin quidditch players pound his fists against the dining table in irritation. He wondered if anyone had caught on to the exact parameters of the spell yet.

"Amazing," James whispered as his eyes glazed over in admiration. "So smart."

Sirius rolled his eyes at James's adoration. "Stop what, Lily?"

"This thing! That disturbs our ability to talk normally! I don't know what it is, but I do know you…" Evans paused, and Sirius watched with glee as her face grew redder and redder as the silence stretched on. He was vaguely impressed she seemed to have figured it out already. "Your fault!" she shouted, finger pointing directly at James. She reminded Sirius of a balloon that had suddenly popped. She slammed both hands on the table, jostling some of the silverware in front of James, causing the boy to lean back slightly. "Fix it," she hissed before walking away.

Sirius let out a laugh as James said dreamily, "I'm going to marry h—mmp." Undeterred, he continued the rest of his sentence in a series of indecipherable hums with both of his lips sealed shut. Beside him, Sirius could hear Remus let out a snort.

"Tough luck, Prongs," a disheveled and sleepy eyed looking Peter said as he sat down on James' left.

"Morning Wormtail. What took so long?" Sirius said. Peter merely gave the Black boy a long stare before ignoring him and began piling his plate with food. To his right, he could hear Remus let out a soft chuckle.

"Looks mad," Remus said, lips close enough to the rim of his tea cup that he could inhale the steam.

Sirius watched Remus's tongue lick his lips. He let out a scoff. "Nah, Wormtail's not mad. Lad's just…" He paused, unable to think of an appropriate word that wouldn't trigger the spell. Sirius waved his right hand in a useless gesture to make up for his inability to speak. Remus shot him a smug look with one eyebrow raised, and Sirius resisted the urge to shove the other boy.

There was a loud clearing of the throat at the head of the great hall, and Sirius turned to see Dumbledore standing, ready to make an announcement. His lips were pressed firmly together, and Sirius wondered if he had recently triggered the spell with his speech. The other professors sitting at the staff table didn't look happy either, though not all of them had their lips sealed. Sirius wondered if any of them had figured out the trigger yet. He avoided looking directly at Professor McGonagall, but he could feel her glaring at him. Or maybe it was James she was aiming at, and he simply sat too close to the other boy. He turned his gaze back to Dumbledore and jumped a little to see that the headmaster was staring right at him, with a slight twinkle in his eyes. _Can't be that annoyed, then,_ Sirius thought. He could feel the heat from Remus's body as the other boy leaned closer to him. "Think _faculty's_ mad?" he heard.

Sirius smiled, still facing the headmaster. "Wouldn't stay fun if faculty _wasn't_ mad," he answered gleefully, looking straight at Dumbledore and winking _. Can't prove it was us,_ he thought.

"Pupils!" Dumbledore started, commanding attention from all four houses in the great hall. He raised both his arms in the air, holding his wand in his right hand. Sirius wondered somewhat dejectedly if Dumbledore had already figured out a way to counter all of their hard work. "May I gain your—" Dumbledore paused, and with a swish of his wand, the words "attention please" materialized as bright purple wisps out of thin air. Murmurings and more frustrated moans behind sealed lips broke out through the great hall.

"Oh, that's not fair!" Sirius folded his arms in annoyance. _Cheater_ , he thought. James was laughing beside him, attracting more stares and glares, and he could even hear Peter on James's other side let out a chuckle. He was tempted to kick them both. Or at the very least, James, since Peter was more of a reach. He felt Remus bump his right shoulder and turned to look at the werewolf giving him a sly smile—the other boy's way of telling him _loophole_. Sirius rolled his eyes and lightly shoved the prefect away from him, returning his attention to Dumbledore.

"As you all may know," Dumbledore's voice rang out across the dining hall, "a particular trick has a hold on us all starting this morning." Dumbledore glanced around the hall, but he stopped and smiled in Sirius's direction before continuing. Sirius winked back at the old man, slightly impressed that he seemed to be doing so well despite having to resort to cheating not two minutes ago. "Though nobody knows our culprit or culprits," he stressed the word, eyes twinkling back again in Sirius's direction, "you all should know that faculty and I will do our job to find out. For now," he paused and tapped the table in front of him with his wand, causing a sheet of parchment to appear next to every student's plate in the Great Hall.

Sirius picked up the piece of parchment and groaned as he read Dumbledore's notes to everyone on what seemed to be triggering the spell.

 _During our conversation at breakfast, you professors and I have come to the conclusion that speaking words with the letter 'e' seems to be what is triggering the spell. However, even if the spell is triggered, its effects do not seem to last beyond a few seconds, and we do not detect any lasting damage. Rest assured, we will work on ending this as soon as possible to prevent any disruptions to your classes and schedules. Please, go about your day as usual to the best of your abilities. Your professors will dictate what, if any, changes will be made in your classes due to this new speech limitation._

"What a spoilsport," he complained to Remus as the rest of the school started talking and groaning to each other again.

Remus hummed in agreement, reading his own piece of parchment. "Half our fun's lacking now," he said.

"You guys think Dumbl—armgh" James started to say before the spell kicked in. He plopped his head down on the table in frustration while Sirius and Peter laughed.

"S'alright, Prongs," Peter mumbled with food in his mouth. Swallowing, he pat James on the back and said, "You'll grasp it soon."

"Think so, Wormtail?" Remus asked with a smug smile that Sirius thought rather suited him quite well.

Peter gave a friendly shrug, and James lazily gave Remus a rude hand gesture without removing his forehead from its resting place on the table.

"Nothing you can do about it now, Prongs," Remus responded as he surreptitiously flung a piece of bacon onto James's nest of hair. The other boy made no effort to retaliate or even notice it.

"Savoring this now, Moony?" Sirius asked, remembering Remus's grumbling and complaints not more than an hour ago back in the dormitory.

Remus shrugged, acting innocent, but Sirius could see the gleam of excitement in his eyes and the way his lips curved back into that sly smile as the prefect picked up his mug and drank his tea. Sirius's heart and stomach felt funny for a split second—as if one had stopped and the other had dropped suddenly—as he looked at Remus. Sirius smiled and took that weird sensation to mean he had an exciting day to look forward to.

A loud frustrated scream came from the neighboring Hufflepuff table, and as Sirius shared a look with Remus, he knew he wasn't the only one looking forward to what the rest of the day would bring.


End file.
